Jade Star (Star Quartet 4)

She felt the beads of perspiration on his forehead, felt the pounding of his heart beneath her hand. “Michael!”

“What?” Saint came awake with a shudder. For a moment he held himself utterly still. Then very softly he whispered, “God, Jules, I’m so bloody scared.”

She straightened the tangled covers with trembling hands, then pulled him close. “I know,” she said against his temple. “I would be too. But, Michael, listen to me . . .” For a moment she could think of nothing to say, for this large, proud man was shuddering against her, and she couldn’t bear it. “Listen to me,” she repeated, stroking his thick hair, hugging him. “If you don’t see tomorrow, then you will see next week. Your eyes will heal, I swear it to you.”

And if they didn’t? If he became completely blind? No, she couldn’t, wouldn’t, accept that, at least not yet, and she couldn’t allow him to give up.

“I dreamed that you needed me,” he said, his voice low and taut. “You were hurt, I guess. I told you I would help you, and I smiled at you and began to tell you a stupid story. And then suddenly I couldn’t see, and you were begging me to help you. I couldn’t see!”

He was clutching at her, his face buried against her breasts. He was shuddering as if he were freezing to death. “I was useless,” he said.

“Michael,” she said softly, “it was a dream, that’s all, just a dream. I would have been scared silly if I’d dreamed it was you who were in trouble. You know something else? I can prove that it was stupid, ridiculous.”

She felt him listening to her now, and she smiled, kissing his ear. “Yes indeed. You are incapable of telling a stupid story. You would have had me laughing and cursing you. If I had been doing any begging, it would have been to make you stop because I was giggling so hard.” It wasn’t good enough, she knew, not nearly. Jokes and humor were all right in their place, but not in the dead of night when monsters roamed freely through the mind.

“I will tell you something else, husband. I know you married me because you are an honorable man. That, and you did care for me, or at least you cared for that child you’d known.” She felt him tense, but continued inexorably, “No, it’s all right. But the fact is that we are married. We are a partnership. We are to share in e

verything. And we will. You said something about helplessness and dependence changing one. Well, if it does happen, if you don’t regain your sight, we will both of us change, and adapt and adjust. You would never be useless, and I think if you say that again, I’ll cosh you on your hard head.”

Saint felt her words seep into mind like soothing balm. The fear, the ghastly pain of the dream, were fading, leaving his mind free and alert.

“Do you believe that I could ever love you any less if you were blind for the rest of your life? Have you no idea of what I feel for you? How much I admire and respect you?”

“Jules, I . . . Oh, dammit!”

Suddenly it was too much. Jules burst into tears, scalding, burning tears, and she hated herself, but she couldn’t stem their flow. The dam had burst.

“Ah, sweetheart, no,” he said, moving against the pillows so he could take her into his arms, protect her, soothe her. He realized that they’d just reversed roles, and he smiled a bit. “Jules, don’t let me hurt you . . . my anger and bitterness, well, it’s all within me, and I’ve heard it said that the loved one gets all the misery. Hush, don’t cry so, you’ll make yourself hoarse.” He stroked her hair, kissed her, caressed her bare back. “I don’t know how a bastard like me could ever attract a beautiful creature like you, much less have her care about me.”

Her sobs lessened and soon she was hiccuping against his throat. “I’m sorry,” she managed after a few more minutes.

“About what?”

“You need me to be strong, and I just became what I despise—a weak, silly woman. I’m sorry, Michael, please forgive me.”

“No.”

It was as unexpected as it was angering. She reared up and stared down at him. She could see the outline of his bandage, the planes of his face, but she couldn’t see the smile on his lips. “Just what the hell does that mean?” she demanded.

He laughed, and she pounded his chest with her fists.

“Some weak woman,” he said, grabbed her arms, and tossed her onto her back. “Will I have to tie you down so I can have my way with you?”

“No, but only because I don’t think you can manage it!”

He moved on top of her, his knee pressing against her closed thighs. “Open your legs, Jules,” he said, his mouth against her throat.

The feel of him naked, covering her . . . “What will you do if I do?” she whispered, moving restlessly beneath him.

“I’ll caress you with my mouth until you yell and then I’ll come inside you, so deep that neither of us will know where the other begins or ends. And I’ll fill you with my seed, and you’ll feel it, and know that you are part of me.”

“All right,” she whispered, her body already quivering from his words.

When at last he teased her with his mouth, to caress her as he’d said he would, she couldn’t bear it. The pleasure that convulsed her body was nearly painful in its intensity, a pleasure that held all their shared pain, and she cried out again and again. And when he thrust into her, a long, deep thrust, she clutched him, arching upward, yielding to him, opening to him, wanting him to become a part of her.

“My God, woman,” he said many moments later when he could finally speak, “I never envisioned doing that to that scruffy little girl in Lahaina, at least not consciously,” he added, and laughed.

“No,” she said, clutching her arms about his back, “don’t leave me, Michael.”